Many psychologists are afraid of their own shadow. They're
unwilling to confront their dark side. They may be smart but they're lacking in
consciousness. How else can we explain the third-rate knowledge that the
profession passes along to a suffering world.

Psychological science has failed to recognize the
existence and vital importance of unflattering facts about our humanity that we've
been hiding, denying, and repressing in our psyche. Instead of getting to the
heart of our dysfunction, psychologists are producing an expanding universe of
subprime information and C-rated factoids.

I believe that many psychologists are choosing,
unconsciously, to avoid a deeper study of human nature. They're fleeing into
the "scientific method" and abstract studies in order to get away from a full
examination of their own personal issues and weaknesses. The deeper we go into human
nature, the more we uncover alarming gaps in our knowledge. This knowledge enables
us to let go of old identifications and to make significant changes and
improvements. This less-traveled path can be exhausting when it heads straight
up the mountain. Still, people who become psychologists are supposed to take
the high road.

Experts in psychology say erroneously that we can
overlook the contents of our unconscious mind in favor of mental strategies and
conscious processing. Dr. Richard A. Friedman wrote
last year in The New York
Times that psychological insight (the truth we recover from our unconscious
mind) is overrated. As evidence for his assertion, Friedman mentions the case
of a man in his 30s who was sad and anxious after being dumped by his
girlfriend for the second time in three years. This fellow had also experienced
separation anxiety with earlier girlfriends. Despite his years of
psychotherapy, during which he traced the painful feelings back to a separation
from his hospitalized mother when he was four, the man was not feeling any
better. Friedman asks, "Was this because his self-knowledge was flawed or
incomplete? Or is insight itself, no matter how deep, of limited value?" The
doctor concludes, ". . .it seems fair to say that insight is neither necessary
nor sufficient to feeling better."

It's apparent to me that the man referred to by Friedman
didn't receive effective psychotherapy. The psychotherapy he received didn't go
deep enough. Effective psychotherapy would have explored this man's unconscious
determination to live through old unresolved feelings of being abandoned and
rejected. This is the real insight, that the man has unresolved emotional
attachments, meaning he still resonates emotionally with abandonment and rejection.
Unconsciously, he's compelled to go looking for those unresolved negative
emotions through his relationships with women. This fellow has to expose this
inner contradiction. It persists in his psyche on the basis of this principle: Whatever is unresolved in our psyche is
going to be experienced by us, no matter how painful. Unresolved hurts and
painful memories are the soul food of our psyche's dark side.

We have to expose our unconscious willingness to relive
and recycle old painful feelings in the context of our present life. Good
therapy breaks through the resistance people have to seeing our hidden
compulsion to produce such suffering and self-defeat. Such insight is the essence
of growing consciousness. This deep insight is not offered in conventional psychotherapy.

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With shallow consciousness, people often practice a
form of self-affirmation or self-approval that's compulsive and unhealthy. Mark
Twain noted this tendency when in his essay "What is Man?" he wrote: "We ignore and never mention the Sole Impulse
which dictates and compels a man's every act: the imperious necessity of
securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs." We're driven
compulsively to secure our own approval because we're on the receiving end
(from our inner critic or superego) of harsh allegations of our ineptness,
unworthiness, and foolishness. This persistent self-criticism floods our mind
with self-doubt. We then react by inundating our mind with reassuring
self-affirmation. (This example is just one of thousands that illustrate the
shallowness of our consciousness.)

When we acquire insight that exposes our passivity in
the face of our inner critic, we learn how to become stronger. Emotional
strength and happiness go together.

Throughout the world, people spend much of their time
oscillating back and forth--in silent, anxious mental-emotional considerations
and speculations--between the impression that we're decent human beings and the
painful suspicion that we're unworthy and defective. Many of us live in a state
of compulsive defensiveness, weighing ourselves in the balance moment to
moment, unable to believe deeply in ourselves, while giving credence to impressions
or assessments produced in our psyche that are irrational and negative. An
insufficiency of consciousness produces this uncertainty and self-doubt. To
become more conscious, we have to approach our unconscious mind with great
humility and sincere determination to expose its secrets.

The nature of our consciousness may be the most
important subject facing humanity. Here is how neuroscientist Daniel Bor,
author of The Ravenous Brain," explains
it :

On a personal level,
consciousness is where the meaning to life resides. All the moments that matter
to us, from falling in love to seeing our child's first smile . . . are
obviously conscious events. If none of these events were conscious, if we
weren't conscious to experience them, we'd hardly consider ourselves alive--at
least not in any way that matters. . . Our consciousness is the essence of who
we perceive ourselves to be. It is the citadel for our senses, the melting pot
of thoughts, the welcoming home for every emotion that pricks or placates us.
For us, consciousness simply is the currency of life.

Despite his eloquence, Bor skims around on the surface
of the subject. Like Friedman, he
believes that the role of the unconscious mind has been overestimated. Yet isn't it egotistic to
think that we would already know all the important aspects of our unconscious
mind, especially when the world is awash in folly and self-defeat? Our consciousness
can't be fully appreciated, nor our potential for self-development realized,
until we have exposed vital self-knowledge that has been unconscious.

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Bor says in the above excerpt: "Our consciousness is
the essence of who we perceive ourselves to be." It's more helpful to say, "Our
lack of consciousness produces a false or limited perception of who we are."
With limited consciousness, we perceive ourselves through narcissism, vanity,
victimhood, and entitlement. Clearly, such consciousness is not the essence of
who we are. Yet modern psychology is not offering us a level of insight that
penetrates our denial and resistance.

We need to become smarter and wiser to deal with the
world's increasingly complex challenges. History at its best tells the story of
us getting to know ourselves more fully, art at its best reveals secrets of
human nature, life at its best produces adventures in growing consciousness,
and psychology at its best challenges us to fathom the depths of our collusion
in suffering and self-defeat.

Peter Michaelson is an author, blogger, and psychotherapist in Plymouth, MI. He believes that better understanding of depth psychology reduces the fear, passivity, and denial of citizens, making us more capable of maintaining and growing our (more...)